Michael Imperioli Knows What ‘The Sopranos’ Finale Meant

It’s been seven years since The Sopranos finale, and any lingering frustration that viewers had with that final scene was probably superseded by the Lost finale and later the Dexter finale, so most people have probably gotten over it. I mean, a black screen and an ambiguous ending is much better than boating out into a hurricane and washing up weeks later as A LUMBERBACK.

Basically, Imperioli — who played Christopher Moltisanti in the series — said that he spoke to showrunner David Chase about a year before the finale, and Chase told him how it would end. While Imperioli says he Chase didn’t tell him exactly what it meant, he thinks he knows.

“My opinion is that … we were in [Tony’s] point of view in the last moments of his life and that’s it. He’s not expecting it, it comes out of nowhere and if you were shot, if someone assassinated you, I don’t know, basically everything would go black and [David was] putting us in those shoes at that time.”

So, basically: Boom. Dead.

There it is, folks: Michael Imperioli thinks that Tony was shot and killed, and therefore, Tony was shot and killed. Mystery solved. We can all finally move on with our lives, though we will probably never know what came on the jukebox after the Journey song or if Meadow ordered regular fries or curly after her father was shot.

Yeah, the real-life Mafia doesn’t kill people in public. It’s bad for business and it’s considered disrespectful. Except in this show, people get killed in public *all the time*. There are whackings in suburban driveways, strip club parking lots, and gas stations in broad daylight. There’s even another hit in a restaurant in the last season.

Consider that Tony breaks the families/homes-are-off-limits rule several times, by killing Rusty at his home and killing Phil’s goomar and her dad at home and by killing Phil in front of his wife and grandkids in public.

Killing Tony in front of his family is a pretty good revenge for that insult.

Nothing about that ending was ambiguous at all. David Chase stated that clearly the day after the finale aired that it had a definitive ending, that all the pieces were there, you just had to look find them.

On a subsequent re-watching of the final season it was amazing how specifically unsubtle it seemed in retrospect.

WRONG. People STILL talk about the ending 7 years later and it gets brought up any time there’s a series finale. That’s always been David Chase’s agenda, to get people to think and talk about what happened.

They show Tony get whacked on screen and people forget about it a week later. When was the last time anyone talked about the last scene of Breaking Bad, or whatever happened in the last episode of The Wire?

people still talk about the ending because there is still an argument on whether it was a shitty ending or not. Like people bring up the Dexter ending, as in…”please don’t let (whatever show) end as horrible as the Dexter finale (well, series really…) went.

I always thought it was Tony dying. I figured Butch and the remaining New York crew realized Leotardo was an unreasonable pain in the ass and decided to let Tony clip him–and use that as a pretext to kill Tony, another mercurial pain in the ass.

I like that Chase spent most of the final seconds of The Sopranos showing Meadow trying to parallel park.

If I’m not mistaken, Matt Sirvito, who played an FBI agent on the show, said they originally either scripted or filmed that last scene longer, with the members only jacket guy approaching Tony, making it more clear he died and they changed it at the last minute

meh he cherry picks quotes to fit his narrative. The 2013 peace Chase said

“I do wish that connection had been made better. To me the question is not whether Tony lived or died, and that’s all that people wanted to know: “Well, did he live or did he die? You didn’t finish the show. You didn’t answer the question.” That’s preposterous. There was something else I was saying that was more important than whether Tony Soprano lived or died. About the fragility of all of it. The whole show had been about time in a way, and the time allotted on this Earth. That whole trip out to California was all about that – what people called a dream sequence. And all the dream sequences within the show. Tony was dealing in mortality every day. He was dishing out life and death. And he was not happy. He was getting everything he wanted, that guy, but he wasn’t happy. All I wanted to do was present the idea of how short life is and how precious it is. The only way I felt I could do that was to rip it away. And I think people did get it. It made them upset emotionally, but intellectually they didn’t follow it. And that could very well be bad execution.”

In the 2013 update the writer starts his quote at “Tony was dealing in mortality…” etc. and in that context the thing Chase ripped away was Tony’s life. However, in the full context of that quote he is ripping the show away from us. And that was the point Tony lives or dies doesn’t matter, because life is too short and the ending we want is what got ripped away from us.

Ending it the way David Chase did was more traumatic for the audience than if he just blew out Tony’s brains in front of his family. It felt like real loss in the sense, all of a sudden this characters you spent hours upon hours with is suddenly just ripped away without an explanation or closure. It was brilliant, even though I admit hating it when I first saw it.

He’s NOT dead damn it to hell!!! I refuse to believe that’s what happened.Lol, Even though I’m probably wrong, but I like to think that David Chase whacked us as a audience instead of Tony & put the lights out to our look into this world. Probably just wishful thinking though.

That was my idea too. Earlier in the episode there is a flashback with Bobby where they’re talking about getting clipped. Bobby said something like “you probably don’t even see it coming, you’re just dead” and Tony agrees with him.

Yeah, Tony probably died. If he was shot though, even if it’s from his perspective, there should have been a gunshot a split second before the blackout. So I always assumed he had to have either suddenly heart attacked or aneurismed out or been poisoned or something. The way they filmed it still feels like a cop-out to me regardless.

It’s funny how after all of these years the interpretation of the finale is that Tony was killed. Although Mr. Gandolfini is no longer with us, Tony Soprano is alive and well. Whether you faithfully watched the entire series or just tuned in that night to see Tony’s fate, the viewer “witnessed” Mafia activity. What does the Mafia like to do to witnesses? That’s right – the abrupt blackout ending was the viewer being whacked not Tony.

A movie was planned afterwards that never got traction. I doubt it would be minus Tony Soprano. Also singer of Journey had to Ok the end. Doubt if he would want to Ok a hit connected to his song. Finally if he was whacked by who? its easy look at all episodes cross out those that were whacked.

tony soprano like david chase suffer from depression which means lots of thought about death etc etc. death scenes beforehand that show him in some southern mansion ties in with this or perhaps not?